Mundi Ventures closes €750M for new Kembara deep tech fund

Spain-based Mundi Ventures has completed a €750 million first close for Kembara, its new fund focused on deep tech—advanced technology based on scientific discovery—and climate sectors. The fund secured a €350 million commitment from the European Investment Fund in 2024. According to a regulatory filing from Spain, the fund could even stretch its final closing to €1.25 billion. Kembara is managed by a team within Mundi Ventures, operating across offices in Madrid, London, Barcelona, and Paris.

The fund’s strategy directly addresses what co-founder and general partner Yann de Vries calls Europe’s “scale-up problem.” De Vries, who previously founded Redpoint eVentures Brazil and was a partner at Atomico, joined the German electric aircraft startup Lilium before it ceased operations in 2024. Lilium went bankrupt after raising more than $1 billion, a “traumatizing experience” that de Vries attributes to its inability to find necessary growth capital. “I saw so many amazing teams in Europe that were going through the same journey. [Europe] doesn’t have an innovation problem. It doesn’t have a startup problem. The problem it has is a scale-up problem,” de Vries said.

To prevent similar failures, Kembara plans to offer non-dilutive financing—financing that does not require giving up equity—alongside equity investments to optimize capital structures. The fund’s investment parameters include:

• Initial check size: Plans to write initial checks ranging from €15 million to €40 million.
• Target portfolio: Approximately 20 companies, focusing on Series B and C rounds.
• Total investment: Could reach up to €100 million per company, including follow-on rounds to support global scaling.

This scale of investment positions Kembara alongside other large European vehicles. For comparison, deep tech VC firm Elaia and asset manager Lazard formed LEC (Lazard Elaia Capital), which targets initial investments between €20 million and €60 million, while operator-led fund Plural is reportedly raising a new fund of up to €1 billion.

Kembara’s leadership team includes Mundi Ventures founder Javier Santiso, who is now a co-founder and general partner of Kembara, alongside general partners Robert Trezona and Pierre Festal, and senior strategic advisor Siraj Khaliq. Santiso previously served as the European CEO of Khazanah, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund (state-owned investment fund). De Vries noted that the fund will seek global investors in its second close to secure access to global markets and supply chains, particularly as geopolitical shifts lead governments and sovereign wealth funds in Europe to back regional deep tech champions. He pointed to Google’s 2014 acquisition of DeepMind for more than $500 million as an example of a European gem that sold too early due to a lack of growth capital.

Why it matters

Mundi Ventures’ new Kembara fund targets the “scale-up problem” in European deep tech, aiming to bridge the gap between early-stage innovation and global commercial success through growth capital and non-dilutive financing. By providing larger growth-stage checks, the fund seeks to prevent promising European startups from failing or selling prematurely due to capital scarcity.